Spy at Center of Leak Case Still in Shadow

WASHINGTON, July 1 - For nearly two years, the investigation into the leak of a covert C.I.A. officer's name has unfolded clamorously in the nation's capital, with partisan brawling on talk shows, prosecutors interviewing President Bush and top White House officials, and the imminent prospect that reporters could go to jail for contempt of court.

But the woman at the center of it all, Valerie E. Wilson, has kept her silence, showing the discipline and discretion that colleagues say made her a good spy. As her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, has become a highly visible critic of the administration and promoted his memoirs, Ms. Wilson has ferried their 5-year-old twins to doctors' appointments, looked after their hilltop house in the upscale Palisades neighborhood of Washington and counseled women with postpartum depression.

On June 1, after a year's unpaid leave, Ms. Wilson, now known to the country by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, returned to a new job at the Central Intelligence Agency, determined to get her career back on track, her husband said. Neither the agency nor Mr. Wilson would describe her position, except to make what might seem an obvious point: she will no longer be working under cover, as she did successfully for almost 20 years.

"Before this whole affair, no one would ever have thought of her as an undercover agent," said David Tillotson, a next-door neighbor for seven years who got to know the Wilsons well over back-fence chats, shared dinners and play dates for their grandchildren with the Wilsons' children, Trevor and Samantha.

"She wasn't mysterious," Mr. Tillotson said. "She was sort of a working soccer mom."

He recalled his incredulity on July 14, 2003, when his wife, Victoria, spotted in The Washington Post, in a syndicated column by Robert Novak,...

I think the sources are CIA (and one possibly at State as Plame had connections there) and I do believe the information was given as an honest explanation, not "retaliation".

Here's an old New York Times column (notice it's not referenced by the very same Times to provide context for this piece) that refers to her status (and makes the State Department connection I just referred to):

Secrets of the Scandal

October 11, 2003

First, the C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson's name (along with those of other spies) to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time, and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.

Second, as Mrs. Wilson rose in the agency, she was already in transition away from undercover work to management, and to liaison roles with other intelligence agencies. So this year, even before she was outed, she was moving away from "noc" — which means non-official cover, like pretending to be a business executive. After passing as an energy analyst for Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a C.I.A. front company, she was switching to a new cover as a State Department official, affording her diplomatic protection without having "C.I.A." stamped on her forehead.

~snip~

I don't take everything in the column at face value and some information in it appears conflicting. Novak said her name was readily given and when he said he would publish it, after the first perfunctory "don't" no further urging to withhold the information was given---Novak said his experience is if she had been covert at the time or the knowledge harmful to others he would have been strongly advised not to disclose it and this simply did not happen.

Over at The Corner (scroll down) they have a new picture with this description:

According to Vanity Fair, the photo was taken at the magazine's annual dinner for the Tribeca Film Festival, and Plame's and Wilson's fellow guests included Robert deNiro, Nicole Kidman, Barry Diller, Willem Dafoe, John McEnroe, and many others. Plame's and Wilson's photo appears below a shot of David Bowie and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs.

The Corner is commenting on the Times slurpfest:

Thanks. Here's one reason I was wondering--from the (in)famous Vanity Fair article:

In 1997, Plame moved back to the Washington area, partly because (as was recently reported in The New York Times) the C.I.A. suspected that her name may have been on a list given to the Russians by the double agent Aldrich Ames in 1994.

If part of the reason for her recall to Washington was that the Agency was concerned Ames had compromised her, it stands to reason they were no longer using her for undercover work after that. It also may raise other questions if she was put on unpaid leave as well.

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